Mental health issues have always been part of talks and interviews, but still, people refuse to open up about the issues they face. As a result of a busy schedule and excluded lifestyle, it’s common for a person to feel lonely and left out. So in honor of World Mental Health Day on October 10, Orlando Bloom opens up about the challenges he faced after a serious accident as a teenager.
The ‘Pirates of the Caribbean‘ actor is the international goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. The three-minute-long video was a joint post by the actor and the organization. In the post, the actor simply talks about the accident that had happened to him and also about the way the incident has given him time to think about life.
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What Happened To Orlando Bloom?
Bloom had fallen from a window on the third floor and broken his back when he was 19 years old. The actor says that he had been fortunate to have survived as his spinal cord was intact. But the fall had its own impact. Bloom shares, “I was told for the first four days that I may never walk again.” This news was something that he had the actor feared the most.
“That was really the beginning of what was a long and painful journey for me into recognizing and understanding some of the patterns that had been in my life that had led me to have numerous accidents. And the culmination was breaking my back, which was a near-death experience,” Bloom opened up. But the 19-year-old hadn’t given up. He had back surgery. Bloom started wearing braces and started physical therapy. The actor spent 12 days in the hospital before he could walk out on crutches.
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Dark Times That Followed
Being bedridden, was a struggle for any active teenager. The same was the case with Bloom. “As somebody who’d sort of always been very active in my life, it felt very restrictive all of a sudden and I was in a lot of pain,” he explained. But the injury had given him space and time to reexamine his life. It gave him a chance to change his outlook on life.
“There is always an opportunity for you to transform the pain, whether it be physical or mental, into the great, good fortune of your life,” he tells. “And it is so important to reach out to people, to talk to people, to find somebody, in order to create the possibility for communication that leads to transformation and change.” The actor urges people to start conversations. The question “What’s on your mind?” the actor says can be a starter. Let’s hope that the world would be better with better talking.
